County Sees Cash in Booming Pot Trade
But Some Neighbors See Big Trouble
By five o’clock Friday June 30, no fewer than 508 commercial-scale marijuana growers had signed onto Santa Barbara County’s Cannabis Operations Registry, signaling their intent to take advantage of California’s new law, enacted by initiative last year, legalizing recreational marijuana. It goes into effect New Year’s Day 2018. Of those registrants, 200 already are producing commercial cannabis for the medical market. The rest seem to be entrepreneurial newcomers hoping to join the new pot-powered gold rush.
Most farms are in the Lompoc and Carpinteria valleys. Some growers claim to have as much as 200,000 square feet under cultivation; others claim they’ll do five times that amount. Dennis Bozanich, who is bird-dogging the issue for the County of Santa Barbara, said some of those numbers appear so outlandishly large that he will double-check them before issuing any final tallies.
Given that marijuana cultivation currently dwells in a cross fire of contradictory state, federal, and local laws, registrants were taking some risk. But it was the growers who initiated the idea of the registry in the first place, not county officials. Since the new legalization allows local elected officials to determine how the cannabis industry will develop in their regions, the registry was a friendly gesture by eager entrepreneurs. And more dramatically, registry numbers hint at how financially rewarding the new industry might be for the county’s strained coffers.
